Paul and Rubio, Two Republican Up-and-Comers, Compete for the Spotlight

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

March 20, 2013

WASHINGTON — They are supposed to be natural allies: two relatively young conservatives from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party who ascended to the Senate in the Republican sweep of 2010 and already figure prominently in the early chatter for 2016.

But two years before the next presidential campaign really even begins, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio are flying in each other’s airspace, not quite rivals but obvious competitors, thumping into each other in the narrow confines of the political world.

From immigration to foreign policy to the future of the Republican Party, the two senators have jostled for headlines, jabbed away and proved, not for the first time, that the Senate can seem a claustrophobic space when thoughts of the White House start to beckon.

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“Clearly, they’re not just jousting,” said Doug Gross, a prominent Republican political consultant in Iowa. “They’re elbowing.”

Mr. Rubio, 41, Florida’s Cuban-American political star, was supposed to be the headline grabber in his party’s quest to reach out to Latino voters with an expansive overhaul of immigration laws. Then Mr. Paul, 50, a Kentucky ophthalmologist, took the spotlight on Tuesday with a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and an implied embrace of a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants.

On immigration, Mr. Paul was playing catch-up. He is not one of the bipartisan collection of eight senators negotiating an immigration law overhaul, a group in which Mr. Rubio is indispensable. Yet because Mr. Paul is not Latino, because he campaigned on a fierce seal-the-border message, his entry into the debate seemed like a turning point.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Last week, at a major gathering of political conservatives, Mr. Paul again upstaged Mr. Rubio with his jab that the “G.O.P. of old has grown stale and moss-covered.” His retort came after Mr. Rubio declared: “We don’t need a new idea. There is an idea: The idea is called America.”

Where Mr. Rubio delivered a workmanlike speech seemingly intended to appeal to the old guard, Mr. Paul spoke to a throng of placard-waving acolytes, thumbing his nose at a party “encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom.”

Mr. Rubio showed up in a standard-issue dark suit and blue tie. Mr. Paul, following Mr. Rubio to the lectern, shed his Senate uniform for a pair of jeans and cowboy boots.

Chosen to deliver the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address last month, Mr. Rubio declared, “The world is a better place when America is the strongest nation on earth.” Then this month Mr. Paul electrified much of the party with a 13-hour filibuster that spotlighted the White House’s drone wars and what libertarians see as presidential overreach that threatens to extend even onto American soil.

Just days after the November election, Mr. Rubio was in Altoona, Iowa, with his name in lights, honoring Gov. Terry Branstad at his politically tinged birthday party. Not to be outdone, Mr. Paul will headline the Iowa Republican Party’s marquee Lincoln Day Dinner in Cedar Rapids on May 10, making an early venture into the state that could become a second home, should he decide to run for president.

“When you go to Iowa, people tend to take notice, so part of the reason to go is to advance the message we want as far as growing the Republican Party,” Mr. Paul said. “Going to Iowa and going to any of those states that people seem to pay a lot of attention to helps to draw attention to the message, and the message we have is, we need a more inclusive party, we need a bigger party, not a smaller party.”

As reporters swarmed Mr. Paul on Tuesday to get his thoughts on immigration and his trip to Iowa, Mr. Rubio was on CNN declaring that Justin Timberlake might be a talented performer but he was not in the league of one of his favorites, Tupac Shakur.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who also spoke at the conference, was supposed to be the headline grabber in his party’s quest to reach out to Latino voters.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

“He’s not on my pod list,” Mr. Rubio said of Mr. Timberlake.

Of course, the “Stand With Rand” placards that greeted the Kentucky senator last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Rubio accolades and the attention showered on his affinity for rap and his abrupt lurch for water during his State of the Union response — all of that might be froth that bubbles away when the next Republican beauty contestants appear.

Dave Funk, who just stepped down as chairman of the Republican Party of Polk County, Iowa, home to Des Moines, said he was not sure the real 2016 contenders had even appeared on the radar. “Most of us are looking at these guys and saying, ‘Why don’t you go back to the work we pay you to do and impress us by getting something exceptional done, not coming out here to tell us how wonderful you are?’ ” he said.

But for better or worse, Senators Rubio and Paul have come to represent this moment’s fork in the Republican road. Mr. Rubio, who divided the Republican establishment in 2010 with his brash primary challenge to former Gov. Charlie Crist’s Senate run in Florida, looks like the establishment’s man for now.

Mr. Paul, as he tries to expand his political appeal beyond the ardent but limited libertarian base of his father, Ron Paul, has become the face of radically smaller government and a more inward-facing, limited foreign policy.

“Rand Paul has to be taken seriously as a potential force,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. But, Mr. Cullen added, Mr. Rubio’s appeal to more traditional Republicans could still prove to be the more powerful draw. “Three years is a long time,” he said. “Being the establishment guy might not be as bad as it is now.”

And attention is being paid. Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, said she knew of “numerous requests” from Republicans for both men to visit her state, which holds the first presidential primary.

All of that is playing out day to day in the Senate. Veterans of past presidential campaigns waged there shrug it off. After all, in the early months of the 2008 campaign, Senate leaders had to time votes to deal with the absences of seven sitting senators on the campaign trail: Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Christopher J. Dodd, Evan Bayh, John McCain and Sam Brownback.

“If you’re a United States senator, unless you’re under indictment or detoxification, you automatically consider yourself a candidate for president of the United States,” said Mr. McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee that year.